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Wallpaper Details: Happy Birthday Boom!

This is a shot of the Macy's Fireworks show this past July 4th. I t was taken from Weehawken, New Jersey as the show was held on the Hudson this year (way better than the East River). I got pretty lucky on this particular shot. I timed it just right and got the shot just as the three fireworks exploded. Thanks for looking!

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Comments from the Community

AWESOME! Thanks! =) It almost looks fake its so perfect. It has nice detail in the buildings even though it's a night shot and it's very sharp like most of your other pieces. Just an overall fun shot that works great as wallpaper! Thanks again Danny..

I had a plan on how to capture this and it worked out. The fact that it worked out so well was pure luck. I arrived at my spot in Weehawken, NJ at about 12:30PM for the 9:30PM to ensure my place. It was such a long day, but I'm glad I've got something to show for it!

You guys tell me how you think I can improve this. I'm really not sure!

Danny, you're not sure about how to improve this because I'm not sure that you can! This is really spectacular. Nice job! I wish my 4th of July shots turned out half as good as this! You said you had a "plan". Could you give us a little clue as to what that plan was (aperture, shutter speed, ISO, other camera settings, post-processing, etc.)?

Thanks Brad. I'll run down some of the settings for you below. One thing that is an absolute must is a tripod. I saw a lot of people handholding and that's crazy. You'll get the fireworks because the're really bright and a relatively fast shutter will capture it, but nothing else.

My settings were Bulb, f/10 and ISO 100. For this particular shot, I used a 8 second exposure. At the beginning of the show I was noticing that a 10 second exposure exposed the city properly, but at the same time with all the fireworks painting the sensor, it was too much and looked like a mess. At the end of a particular sequence of fireworks, I opened the shutter to begin exposing the city. I had a feeling of the timing and by the time those fireworks went off and I closed the shutter, it was 8 seconds and it looked pretty good.

As far as post, I had to brighten the city a touch. I also added noise reduction and sharpening, in that order. All these modifications were done in CS5.

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